


Love is Like a Shower of Stars: Heian Period

by mahoutokoro-at-nagumo (chromemuffin)



Series: Mahoutokoro AU [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Mahoutokoro, Expanded Universe, F/F, F/M, Gen, Japanese Wizarding Culture, M/M, Mahoutokoro (Harry Potter), Multi, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Unreliable Narrator, Worldbuilding, other tags on a chapter by chapter basis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-17 12:17:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13658817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chromemuffin/pseuds/mahoutokoro-at-nagumo
Summary: A chronicle of the history of wizarding Japan as told through individual accounts across time. This massive project will be told through a variety of narrative styles, from standard narratives to diary and textbook entries and even plays. Because it spans a number of years from approximately year 800 to the present, each work in the series covers a single era in Japanese history.This work covers the Heian Period (794-1185).





	1. Table of Contents

### About the Project

 _Love is Like a Shower of Stars_  is a Harry Potter AU set in a canon-divergent Japanese wizarding world. It originally started as a way to showcase various headcanons I came up with on my tumblr, [mahoutokoro-at-nagumo](http://mahoutokoro-at-nagumo.tumblr.com/), which is dedicated to crafting a believable magical Japan based in the Potterverse. It quickly gained a life of its own from there as I delved into family histories, Japanese wizarding culture, and Japanese magic as a whole. As stated in the tags, this fic is not entirely canon-compliant (the location of Mahoutokoro, for one, is completely different as is the name of the school itself), though it does still follow the rules of the Potterverse and is intended to take place in the same verse. It will not contradict any major events from the novels.

As a heads-up, I will not be posting chapters in order. I write as inspiration strikes. There is also no overarching plot for the most part. Several tales do connect to others from a different time period, thus this constantly updating table of contents, which will link to direct sequels where appropriate. As stated in the summary, some chapters follow a more traditional narrative while others are diary entries, excerpts from books, and even parts of a noh or kabuki play if I can pull it off.

In addition, this work only covers the Heian Period (794-1185). At some point, I quickly realized that the number of stories I have planned for this project would make this a supremely long fic well over 100 or even 200 chapters by the end, so I decided to split the series up by era. I realize that some of the eras are much longer than others (the Edo period lasted over 250 years, the Taishō a mere 14), but it'll probably be fine this way. Probably.

Requests are welcome and can be left in the comments section here or on tumblr.

A final note: relevant tags and warnings will be listed at the start of each chapter. There are waaay too many to list in the proper tags section.

### Table of Contents

The last three stories added to the fic will be highlighted in **bold**.

  * **The Origin of Yashahime** (Part 1), [The Man-Eater Yashahime](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14120913/chapters/32539962) (Part 2)




	2. The Origin of Yashahime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings & Tags: character death, abusive relationships

### The Origin of Yashahime

  


##### Watari District, Mutsu Province

The first daughter of the headman who presided over Watari was born in the early hours of the morning when the distant mountains burned like a sea of gold-crested flames. The headman and his wife had seen ten years' worth of seasons come and go without once cradling a child of theirs past its first six days of life. Once the girl proved hearty enough to endure the brisk autumn winds and salt-tainted air from the nearby ocean, the couple readily bestowed the name Kiku upon her. Like the flower after which she was named, Kiku's cheeks glowed warm and healthy. Her smile as she grew was just as bright, brimming with a thousand unsaid words she would only confer upon her sister, Tei, for to voice them at the breathless pace she preferred was unladylike and uncouth.

The couple's second daughter, Tei, was named such for the joy her birth brought her parents, who had been certain that one daughter was all the heavens would ever grant them. To those who fixed them with pity and sympathy for the blessed curse of two daughters and no sons, the couple expounded upon their daughters' loveliness and the families with whom they had started preliminary marriage arrangements. Kiku and Tei were destined for wealthy houses where they would never go hungry, to families who had resided in Watari for generations.

Tei, born in the winter following Kiku's first year, was a much quieter child from the moment she emerged into the world. She was so quiet that her parents feared the worst, waking each morning with the horrid thought that the winter was too bitter, her body too frail to sustain her. Only when she had reached a year of age and her cheeks glowed with the same warmth and delight as her sister did they finally relax and cease their regular, frantic offerings to the gods for the health of their children.

As the years passed, however, Tei's silence grew more and more concerning. Kiku understood her perfectly, but the older sister was the only one who comprehended her vague gestures and wordless utterances. Even their babysitters, who had totted them around since infancy, could understand the youngest daughter no more than her parents could.

The girls who minded the couple's daughters had other observances, which they kept quiet about as long as they could bear. However, it is impossible to mind a child all day and night without noticing how a crying fit here and there would be followed by a vase of flowers in the alcove toppling over, or a weak flame on the nearby stove roaring to life with no discernible cause. For a time, the family's servants assagued their own fears by saying, "It must be that the spirits of this house are restless. Once they have had their fun, surely they will leave."

However, the incidents continued to escalate with no end in sight. Even more harrowing than witnessing a jar of salt topple over and coat the entire kitchen in a gritty layer of it was the laughter from the couple's daughters as their babysitters frantically brushed the salt off their heads. Eventually, the servants of the house laid out small offerings and prayers. They even considered calling for someone to perform an exorcism. Shortly after voicing this suggestion, a traveling priest entered the courtyard on a chilly morning just a few days after the first of the plum blossoms began to peek through snow-covered branches.

The wife of the headman greeted the man and accepted his introductions. However, before she had the opportunity to direct him to the inn down the street, one of the babysitters rushed out from the kitchen. The girl, pulling along Kiku who was bubbling over with laughter, threw herself at the priest's feet and begged him to expel the ghost or spirit haunting the kitchens and making it impossible to carry on their daily chores.

This was the first the wife had heard of the strange happenings. At first furious for the lack of respect from a servant of her own house, she moved to scold the girl. The priest, at that very moment, looked down to see the wide and curious eyes of the eldest daughter, now just over three years old.

This priest, his name either forgotten or never given at all, was not merely journeying for alms on a pilgrimage. He was a man in his older years, but possessing a particular spring to his step and liveliness that even the frigid weather did not dampen. Although his features were unremarkable, the wife of the household would remember him decades later for the perfectly happy smile he wore when he patted her daughter on the head and asked, "Now, I know well just how fun it may be to play around, but you shouldn't cause trouble for your babysitters. They work very hard so you never want for food or attention, don't they?"

No one expected Kiku to respond with intelligible words. Fearing that her daughter, however lovely her countenance seemed, would embarrass them to this stranger, the wife scooped her up. Her mind was filled with confusion for the man's words, but the babysitter rose from the dusty ground, her heart pounding oddly in her chest.

Kiku threw her arms out, squirming and protesting with half-formed words. Just then, a cloud of snow descended upon them. It toppled, seemingly, from the rooftop over three _ken_ [1] away. The girl's babysitter shrieked, certain it was the spirit again. The wife of the household held her daughter close and stiffened.

All the while, a deep laugh rose from the depths of priest's chest.

"There is no spirit or ghost in this house," he said when the snow had settled into their clothes and hair and around their feet. "Just one very playful little girl."

  


* * *

  


The headman of Watari and his wife could not believe at first that both their daughters possessed such talents. They were a wealthy family, certainly, but none of their ancestors had a trace of talent for the purification arts nor did anyone they knew from Watari itself.

"Are you certain it isn't just a playful spirit underfoot?" asked the wife, sensible while her husband was busy wondering how and why both their daughters were blessed to this extent. "Perhaps it has merely taken to our daughters and follows them about. Children have no sense for the malicious nature of spirits like those, no?"

Her voice was, of course, steeped in unease. Playful they might be, but a spirit is a spirit. The nature and ways of the yōkai that inhabit this world alongside ours are incomprehensible to all but themselves. Even a priest of considerable age and experience can only guess as to their reasons for interacting with mankind.

"In most cases, you would be correct, ma'am," said the priest who, unbeknownst to the couple, journeyed up and down the shores and mountains of Mutsu for this very purpose: to identify children like Kiku and Tei, the young boys and girls whose spiritual awareness and power were beyond that of ordinary people. "Your daughters are young still, so at the moment such accidents may seem merely coincidence. I will return to this village in five years, at which point you will likely have had sufficient time to see the truth in my words."

It was a matter of course that the wife did not believe the priest, however benevolent he seemed at first glance. They provided him lodgings at the inn down the road for the night and food for the journey, wherever he was headed next, but the wife warned the staff to keep her daughters out of sight.

"He himself may be a spirit of sorts," she cautioned them. "Even the good and dutiful can all too easily fall to their grip. Don't let Kiku or Tei out of your sight."

It was a small incident that occurred in the span of not even two days' time. A tiny, almost insignificant event that everyone in the household forgot, for the most part, five years later. All except the headman's wife, who continued to set out offerings for the spirits that surely had lived alongside them all these years.

  


* * *

  


Tei knew from her sister that the 'accidents' that followed them everywhere were not the work of spirits, nor a sign of misfortune that the servants muttered about when they thought the two were distracted by their lessons or playing in the courtyard. She had neither the words nor will to explain it, even to the children of the wealthy merchant families with whom they would sometimes play. When asked for a demonstration, she could not give it. When asked if she was a spirit in a human's body, she denied it.

Kiku was very unclear as to the nature of their abilities. She only remembered, vaguely, that there was a man who had once laughed and acted as if it was all perfectly natural. Tei wanted to know more about this man, but every servant who had been around at the time of his arrival had gone home and onto other work after serving out their contracts in Watari. But her parents insisted it was the work of spirits inhabiting the house, leaving Tei to wonder if perhaps the neighborhood children were right. Perhaps she and Kiku were spirits and their parents merely too afraid to admit that they had lost the only two of their children who lived past their first birthday.

In the spring after Tei turned seven and Kiku, eight, their mother gave birth to a baby boy. The two were shuffled away from the house while the birth took place, told to wait patiently in the courtyard with their _temari_ , handcrafted from the colorful threads of the _kimono_ they wore when they were younger.

Unknown to the two sisters, their parents had recently rejoiced when the last of the snow melted and the priest showed no signs of returning. He had been wrong, after all. Or he had been a spirit merely passing through, perhaps playing tricks on people naive enough to believe him.

"Will the baby be like us?" Tei asked her sister.

"Maybe. I hope so! Maybe then they'll believe us when we tell them…" Kiku was interrupted by the sight of a man in the telltale garb of a priest. Although Watari does not get many visitors even to this day, each and every one of them stopped by the headman's place to pay their respects. Kiku could not possibly remember the priest who she met as a young child, but it made no difference to the elder of the two sisters whether or not she knew this person.

They had taken to begging tales of far away lands off whichever travelers passed through the village. Kiku approached the priest with that intention.

"Mister!" she called. "You're not from around here!"

"Indeed, I am not," said the priest with a fond smile. He remembered the girl, of course, and brightness of her eyes and confidence in her steps had not changed in the five years he traveled up and down the coast of Mutsu. "I come from a village to the north called Hanayama, in the Kurihara District."

All of it meant nothing to the two young girls who had never even stepped foot on the shores and piers of Watari, let alone a neighboring village or distant lands.

"Tell us about it?" Kiku asked, at last remembering her manners. "I'm called Kiku, and this is my younger sister, Tei."

Tei, who was quiet but not shy in the least, tugged at her sister's sleeves.

"He should greet mother and father first."

"But they're busy right now," said Kiku. "Oh! Come into the kitchen, Mister! Iwa will make you tea while you wait!"

The sisters brought the stranger who was not really a stranger at all into the house through the kitchens in the back. They offered him tea, prepared by the disapproving Iwa who had served the village headman and his wife for decades before either of the two girls were born. And the priest waited, patiently, along with the other inhabitants of the household for the birth of the child who would become the heir that the family had been waiting for.

  


* * *

  


Days passed before the household's newest guest could see the headman and his wife. Once he did meet with them, however, the couple could no longer deny that their daughters were the average little girls they thought them to be throughout these long five years.

The priest showed the parents and their children the arts of his trade, the feats that Kiku and Tei, too, would be capable of with proper training. He animated a simple square of plain washi paper into a crane that could dive in a bowl of water without dissolving. He explained the arts used to weave luck into protection charms and amulets, of the men and women who employed those arts to shield the populace from _yōkai_ that would harm them.

"But how do you know that Kiku and Tei have this...this talent?" insisted the wife, cradling her newborn baby close. "Because of a simple accident that happened over five years ago? It was merely the wind that day. It'd be best for everyone involved if you could accept that."

That she could remember a small, insignificant 'accident' five years after it occurred told everyone present that it was no mere coincidence. That day, there had been no wind to blow the snow off the rooftops and tree branches. The wind was her own creation.

Finally, to save her mother whose face had grown creased and serious with unease, Tei spoke.

"It's true, mother!" she cried. "Kiku and I made strange things happen sometimes. Sometimes, we think about it and it happens."

"Like the time I didn't want to eat anymore _tsukemono_ and it all disappeared!" Kiku piped up, not to be outdone by her younger sister. "Or-"

The more examples they cited, the less confident their mother's firm stare grew. Eventually, she ordered them to quiet down and go into the yard to play while she and their father heard what the priest had to offer. Feeling that they had won in some small, significant way, the sisters scrambled out of the room abuzz with thoughts of all they could do with these 'arts' that now had a name and a shape in their minds.

  


* * *

  


It was decided after a long and tedious discussion that the couple's daughters would spend their days in the next town over, where several families versed in the _onmyō_ and ritual arts lived and worked. They would educate the girls until they reached the age of sixteen or mastered every skill they would need to maintain control over their abilities well into adult life. The families were all, the priest assured, good people who traveled back and forth between the villages and towns up and down the coast to renew wards and rites every season. Kiku and Tei would be glad for the lessons and the challenges their talents posed.

A small, burgeoning thought took root in the headman and his wife's minds. They had made some preliminary plans to marry Kiku to a wealthy merchant's second son, but the family was also native to Watari and held little importance once away from its salty shoreline. There was no possible way they could marry Kiku to the son of any normal family now, they had realized halfway through the talks with the priest. Nor would she be happy in a household where she would have to hide her talents from even her own husband, Ultimately, it was the hope of marrying their daughters into such prosperous families who could understand their oddities that drove the couple to agree to the arrangement.

Thereafter, the sisters would eventually come to see the village of Yamamoto as their second home. There came a point around their sixteen and fifteenth birthdays, in fact, when they could say with confidence that they remembered the faces of the families who had taken them in and taught them the arts better than they could recall the appearance of their own parents. They could not write, but the priest would pass through the villages of Mutsu once or twice year and deliver whatever message they had for each other.

Over time, the headman and his wife arranged for Kiku to marry the first son in the local shrine keeper's extended family. It would take her two villages away from her hometown of Watari, but they were abundantly wealthy and far more than her parents had hoped for in terms of marriage prospects. They agreed almost as soon as the priest pitched the proposal to them, and so Kiku was set to be wed soon after she turned sixteen.

However, the good fortune that sat at the family's heels for those sixteen years finally ran dry. Three of their children had lived and two had developed a talent for the arts. Although there were years of poor harvests and the loss of entire catches at sea from raging storms and _ayakashi_ [2] that roam the waters, the headman's family flourished, uninterrupted, until the summer after Kiku's sixteenth birthday.

  


* * *

  


"She won't last 'till morning."

"Oh, what a pity…just a month from her wedding day, too…"

"I heard that they've already started looking for another girl…The Yashiro boy is already twenty this year."

"Twenty? And unmarried?"

"They, or rather the missus, is quite particular about these matters, or so I heard."

"Oh, what a strange disease it is, though."

"They won't allow even a single maid into the room. Surely that means there is nothing left to do but…"

"Don't be so crass. Her sister is always around here somewhere, isn't she?"

Tei tried to ignore the gossip surrounding her sister's death, pass it off as the ramblings of women who had nothing better to do while piling the clothes up to take to the river. The Machiya family, who owned a rice trading business alongside their duties to the local shrine, had taken her and Kiku in all those years ago. Now, they were imposing upon them for the last time.

Her sister's illness was too bizarre and disturbing to show anyone except Tei and the other members of the household who knew anything of the arts. The arts and the realm of the spirits that resided alongside the mundane one that Tei had been born to, and the one that her parents still resided in. The thought of traveling home to deliver the news pained and worried her greatly all through the night as she grasped her sister's weakening hand. She could not possibly leave the burden of telling their parents on the kind but aging priests who had been their go-between all these years.

"You will recover soon," Tei told Kiku many times, in a strength of voice that she rarely displayed. "All the rites, blessings, and medicines will work."

Kiku only smiled at her, straining with the effort it took for her smile to glow as brightly as it had in their childhood.

"If you say it will," she said faintly, in a lovely and beautiful voice that faded away into the early morning mist, "then I will believe you."

Two days later, her sister passed away at her side, nose and mouth oozing inky black blood far thicker than any Tei had ever seen before.

Perhaps the last words spun between the sisters had morphed into a spell, woven into the air around the scent of sickness and death, and settled around Tei like a charm or amulet more potent than any they had ever received at the shrine. Over the next few months, as the Yashiro family hurriedly prepared Tei to marry their first son in place of Kiku, ten more people in the village died of the same strange sickness. Of those who fell ill, most were those who had remained in close proximity with the recently deceased.

Tei, however, was healthy, though perhaps a little skinnier, a little paler in the face, and with longer sighs than before.

  


* * *

  


The day of her wedding had come and gone in the spring after she turned sixteen. The weight in her heart, however, had not yet dissipated when she moved her belongings to her new husband's modest home. It was set across the village on the outskirts where the well-worn road led into the tangled mountain paths beyond. It was a comfortable home for a couple and a few children, but the trees cast shade over it at almost all hours of the day. It was lonesome, quiet, without even the sound of the sea to keep her company at the night.

Most of all, however, was the obvious gap that existed between herself and her husband. No, in her mind she still thought of him as Kiku's husband, Takao. He busied himself with preparations for the shrine festivals, sometimes using shunkō to travel to other districts' shrines for days at a time. The only one who visited was Takao's sister, who helped her with the chores and lectured her on how to act as a proper wife.

"Normally, you would come to live with us," she said, as if Tei was truly that ignorant. "And mother would teach you all of this instead. But in this case…"

It had been too soon after her sister's death. The taint might have lingered on her after how long she insisted on sitting by her side. And yet, Takao had married her anyway. To any outsider, it was an expression of just how much both parties wanted this marriage to be a prosperous one despite its inauspicious beginnings. But to those involved, it was merely a way to smooth things over and return to a state of semi-normalcy without causing trouble or concern to the village that relied upon the Yashiro.

"I understand," Tei had smiled. "If this is what must be done, then so be it. I do not mind."

  


* * *

  


Tei would later regret that she ever brought those words into the world.

_If this is what must be done, then so be it. ___

____

_I do not mind._

She truly did not mind lending her skill to teach the other children in the village who, much like herself, had come from surrounding villages and towns to study and learn to control the arts and their spells. Some had even come from places beyond the mountains. Teaching them, some speaking in tongues so odd that she could not believe they were all speaking Japanese, was a challenge. It was fulfilling to see them round out their first calligraphy strokes with too much force, then to witness their improvement to the point of executing their first spell.

Tei did not mind.

She did the housework without complaint, helped by a family servant a few times a week, left to her own devices on the others. She stayed quiet when Takao returned home with no more than a few polite words in greeting.

She did not mind any of it.

At the behest of his parents, when Takao asked about conceiving a child, Tei agreed wholeheartedly. Perhaps, though she never voiced it out loud and barely within her own mind, she had hoped it would bring them together as Kiku's birth as well as her own had for their parents. Perhaps, the part of her that already knew it was a useless effort was what made her stay silent on the matter.

Either way, she agreed, and a year later, she bore him a son.

That son died soon after he was born. And still, Tei minded, but she did not mind. Not truly. Sadness gripped her heart and she took a few days to return to her own village and visit her parents, but there was nothing she nor Takao could have done. After her sister's death, Tei had come to realize and accept that there are things in this world that we have no control over. To agonize at the unfairness of fate was to try to move the heavens and earth themselves.

And so, Tei did not mind, not exactly.

Two years later, Tei had a daughter. And just like hers and Kiku's births, this child survived.

"We can name her after your mother," Takao had offered, for once speaking warmly. The affection in his tone, which he never turned on Tei, he nonetheless offered their daughter unconditionally. It made Tei happy for the first time in years.

"No, naming her after your mother will do," Tei said softly, exhaustion creeping into her voice. "I owe your family so much."

Neither of them mentioned Kiku's name.

"Miho," Takao said with a smile. "She'll be thrilled. It is a pretty name, though."

"It is," Tei whispered. "Miho."

  


* * *

  


Tei's world turned at an even pace. The seasons passed, she raised her daughter, and endured Mrs. Yashiro's urgings for them to bear another child, a son this time. In a rare moment shared between the two over breakfast one morning, Takao told her that his younger brother had a son who they could adopt if they never ended up bearing an heir.

They only pretended for Miho's sake, at first. Eventually, Tei's hollow interactions with Takao grew to be more comfortable, to the point that she stopped referring to him as Kiku's husband and started calling him as her own.

One day, she told him of this fact that she had harbored in her mind for years. He laughed, a rare laugh filled with warmth that she had only ever heard in passing when his friends stopped by for a visit.

"What is it?" she asked, slightly miffed.

"We never even had a chance to marry," he told her simply, cutting off his laughter for her sake. "I knew her in name only. Nine years have passed since we were wed and you have been my wife for all those nine years, not her."

If only those days could have lasted forever -

No, if only she had remained as wonderfully, blissfully ignorant as she had been at that moment, she would have led a much happier life.

Tei smiled and felt inordinate joy, but like the brief beauty of the cherry blossoms, it faded all too quickly.

  


* * *

  


One day in mid-autumn, she heard from one of the children she was teaching intermediate ward magic to that Takao had been spotted in the far west district of the village. Tei paused in reaching for a brush to draw the necessary characters on the slip of paper when her student leaned over the low desk, trying to contain his energy to manageable levels.

"He had a job to complete over there," she said, though she was not certain of it herself.

The boy shook his head.

"No, my sister saw him go into the house of this-"

Tei glared at him, daring him to utter the crass, indecent words that were about to come out. He ducked his head.

"She's, like, your age. A little older. They knew each other, I think? Anyway, my sister said to keep it quiet, but I thought you should know."

"…Thank you," Tei uttered, the pit of her stomach fluttering and heavy.

For the rest of the day, she convinced herself that the boy had been mistaken or jumped to conclusions. She and Takao had not married for love, but neither had they agreed to break it off or see other people. She was his wife first and foremost. Even if he took other lovers, could she truly blame him? If she had found someone she could lose herself in, even she might have taken that opportunity.

Repeating these things to herself, Tei returned home.

  


* * *

  


A few weeks later, after a long autumn harvest festival and a night of celebration, Tei entered their home with weary feet. Miho was staying with her cousins at the main estate and Tei had just returned from helping to cast the spells that would ward off the _yōkai_ and their distorted magic from the fields to the village center.

What she discovered that night was more than a lovers' tryst. She could have dealt with it. Turned a blind eye, pretended that the woman did not exist.

She saw Takao handing the woman a heavy, dense bundle of _ryō_ [3].

When they saw her in the doorway, Takao cast her an unsteady smile.

"Her family needed some help," Takao tried to explain. "And we had some extra."

That stack of _ryō_ was far more than a little 'extra'. And Tei had seen this woman around. The daughter of a poor family, farmers who worked and toiled like many others in this area, she was plain and certainly not acquainted with the arts in any form.

Tei asked her to leave and for the first time in her marriage, when Takao protested, she said, "Don't."

  


* * *

  


Takao was the eldest son of his family and the eldest child overall. He stood to inherit the entire business and had agreed to marry Tei after the untimely death of his first betrothed. There was no possible way he could have taken that woman as anything but a mistress. Tei's family might have been without any history in the arts, but her father was still the headman of Watari, a village that was flourishing in the years she had been away.

He could not dissolve their marriage and take that woman as his wife. She was a farmer's daughter and without any talent whatsoever. It would be marked a disgrace; Takao might even have been disowned and cast out of the family, his title as heir given to his younger brother by five years.

Tei, who used to complete her duties without complaint, now frequently began to stay at home so that woman could at least not taint the place where Tei's daughter played and slept. She did not bother speaking to Takao, who in turn did not bother to offer her even a half-hearted excuse.

Tei dismissed the babysitter, a fourteen-year-old girl who minded Miho throughout the day, and instead sat in the garden with her daughter. She showed her all the wonderful little tricks and spells that she and Kiku once entertained themselves with when their babysitters weren't looking, or when they had learned how to harness their abilities and twist the world at their fingertips.

She made flowers dance along their descent to the ground. She animated folded paper cranes and streamers. She drew characters on thick washi paper and breathed life into the inky forms that twisted about in the confines of the paper until she pressed a second against the first, allowing it to pass through one sheet after another.

One day, she knew that Takao would be bringing that woman around. He had asked her to keep Miho in the front rooms while he handed the woman more money to 'get her through the month' in the kitchen out back. On that day, Tei took Miho's hand and, as usual, they went into the gardens beneath the green plum blossom tree and played with the sand and leaves on the ground.

Inevitably, the woman saw them.

She shrieked. Tei covered Miho's ears and told her to hide in her room. The girl scampered away just as Takao's mistress flew back into the house, screaming tearfully for him to save her.

"Oh, it's horrible, terrible!" she cried, burying her head against his chest. "Your wife is - is…!"

"A - A _yōkai_ ," he gasped, feigning horror and shock, much to Tei's confusion. "Or - possessed by a _yōkai_! It'll be okay, we'll just call-"

"No!" the woman screamed. Behind her terrified eyes, Tei could see the glimmer of deceit. Perhaps it was her imagination, but she could have sworn she saw it. "Get her out of here! Her and that - that offspring of hers!"

"Calm down," Takao said as Tei's mind and heart caught up with the circumstances. "Just - wait for me in the kitchen, I'll take care of it."

He turned to Tei.

Tei's heart seized once, just once, as she realized how much of a fool she had been. Then, it burned. It burned with hatred and anger and pain so hot that she knew it would damn her to a realm of suffering and an unhappy rebirth. But to Tei, the consequences of suffering in her next life could not compare to the pain she felt at that moment. No, not pain, but anger. The hurt simply accompanied it.

"Please, can you leave and take Miho with you for a while? You can't go to my parents' home, yet, though. I, I want to explain to them properly what's been happening all this time. I think we all deserve that."

Tei did not argue, as usual. But this time, she did mind.

  


* * *

  


She took Miho with her in the morning and together they traveled back to Watari.

"Watari is your mama's hometown," she told her daughter, who complained about not being able to play with her friends thay day. "It's where my parents and younger brother and his family live. I've missed them very much."

"Is it because papa made you sad?" Miho asked, stomping her little foot and glaring with the deepest scowl that a child her age could muster. "If - if he's bullying you, I'll tell him to stop it! And - and if we tell grandma, he'll listen! Let's go back!"

Tei shook her head.

"You don't need to worry about such things. Mama will take care of it. In the meantime, I want you to meet my family. Can you endure being away from home for a little while?"

"I can, don't worry!" Miho piped, smiling up at her happily.

The anger bubbling up from deep within still seared her chest, but a glimmer of the joy she had once experienced returned upon seeing her child's sincere attempt to do more than anyone had ever done for her since Kiku died.

  


* * *

  


Tei spent six days with her aging parents and younger brother, whose wife took to Miho instantly. Her brother had a two-year-old himself, a boy. Even though Tei barely even knew him, he happily agreed to watch her daughter while she sorted out the situation with her husband. Tei nearly wept and, for a moment, she even considered staying.

In the end, she could not bear to burden her parents and her younger brother who was just starting his own family. As the eldest surviving child, she should have established her life already. There was no other option but to return to Yamamoto.

"Tell the Yashiros," her mother urged her, tugging insistently on her kimono. "They are reasonable people. They can talk some sense into their son. Who cares if he doesn't want you to do it? He is your husband, is he not?"

"I will talk to them, mother," Tei said with a smile, despite that her heart had already turned the other way. "Thank you."

  


* * *

  


Leaving Miho was a tearful affair, but her poor, precious daughter tried her best to dry her tears and wish Tei luck. That, and that alone, was enough for her.

Tei returned to Yamamoto a little over a week since leaving.

In her absence, Takao had crafted some woeful tale of her leaving him for another man. Her student who told her about it did not believe him, but others had started to gossip that it was only a matter of course. Their marriage had been founded on the heels of misfortune, after all. Tei could, for once, agree.

It was the mistress, Takao's woman, who now inhabited the house by the mountain path. Tei returned to that place, but by the time she had reached the front door, she realized that her heart no longer ached to say, 'I'm home.' It seemed as if she had been gone for ages, like Urashima Tarō who rode a boat to the world of the dragons, Hōrai, and returned after a few days to find that many more years had passed in his absence.

Tei entered her former home through the front door. As the proper mistress of this place, she at least deserved not to enter through the kitchen in the back like a beggar asking for alms. Without even removing her shoes, Tei slid her hand over the slim dagger she had taken with her from home for protection. Her family, unacquainted with the arts aside from their use in purification rituals, had seen nothing unusual in a lone woman asking for a weapon for protection on the road.

Removing this dagger from her sleeve, she walked into her old bedroom and saw the woman wearing the fine clothes she had received from Takao's family for their marriage. She was putting on Tei's makeup, sorting through her drawers as if she had lived here all her life.

Tei cornered the woman, whose shrieks and screams went unheard as Tei sank the blade in her chest and, without a word, cut her apart down to her stomach.

"My baby! Please, at least-!"

Tei was born a quiet child, so quiet that her parents once feared for her life, that she would not live to draw another breath and would pass away between them on their futon.

In this, too, Tei was quiet. She did not need to air her grievances, nor explain them.

To this woman who had ruined her peace, her blissful ignorance. To the woman who had bewitched her husband into betraying both her and their daughter. If she could just rid their lives of her presence, perhaps they could reach something resembling happiness.

Tei struck again, and again, and again until there was nothing left but blood that ran bright and red across the straw mats, looking much like the bright red of the camilla that grew outside along the paths in the winter.

  


* * *

  


When Takao returned home later, she first heard his cheerful greeting.

"I'm home!"

Without a single second hesitation, she responded in kind.

"Welcome home."

The startled expression on his face, the anger in his eyes, was nothing compared to what had been festering in Tei's heart all these days. It had blackened to something repulsive and ugly, even to herself, something that resembled the sickness that had stolen her sister from her years ago.

"It's all over now," she said calmly, hands folded over her lap perfectly. Takeo balked at the sight of blood all over, soaking deeply into her kimono. "I left Miho with my parents and brother. Once she returns, we can be a family again, like before. I know it wasn't perfect, but we had an understanding, didn't we? With that woman gone, we can return to that at least."

Call it naivety, call it willful ignorance, but Tei had convinced herself everything could return to how it was in that moment. Perhaps it was the hatred and anger in her heart that clouded her vision. If only that woman was not around - if life were really so simple, Tei would have already found the happiness that was promised to her at her naming ceremony.

Smiling faintly, thinking of what she should cook when they brought Miho back home, she did not notice her husband coming up from behind her. He did not use a knife.

Something struck her in the back, sending her to toppling to the floor. Something that burned deep into her spine, crawled through her veins and quickly spread blistering pain through her from head to toe. She had no words for how painful it was, how it stole the air from her lungs.

Her vision blackened. ' _Oh, this must have been what Kiku felt like,_ ' she thought, body seized by waves of pain, the strength seeping away from her.

Even so, beyond the pain of her injuries, beyond the physical exhaustion, her eyes caught hold of the blurry form of the man she called her husband. Perhaps if she had not seen him, if her last thoughts had been of her sister's frailty upon her deathbed, Tei would have passed on like any other. Her grudge would have died with her body.

Glimpsing her husband's form, however, forced the hatred and anger and despair to resurface. It twisted fiercely in her chest, erupted even as he uttered another spell and the flash of the paper talisman in his hand ended her life altogether.

  


* * *

  


The unfaithful husband stumbled through the house, the aftereffects of his wife's death clinging to him like a curse, weighing him down as he slipped through the halls and found the room they had once shared. The woman he had given up his wife and daughter for was nearly unrecognizable. The cry of agony that escaped his lips echoed throughout the house, for he had known that she was with child - his child.

As he screamed, the air grew thicker, the heaviness pulling him to the floor and the pool of blood halfway dry. From that pool of blood, from the reflection of the red that had dried to nearly black, he saw an ugly and disproportionate creature. A thing as hideous and repugnant as a _gaki_ , smelling of corpses and rotting earth. It was tall, though, with human-like features and a mouth that was twisted open as if to eat him whole.

It did not, however, for it is not in the nature of an _onryō_ to show any mercy to their victims.

From that time thereafter, all who approached that house were lost in its decaying halls filled with _yōkai_ energy so heavy and filled with malice that several over the years have reported curious explorers slitting their own throats, ending their own lives, to avoid the fate of the master of the house. The man who, for his crime of betrayal, was forced to slowly rot and fester on the floor beside his mistress and unborn child.

The vengeful ghost could be heard wailing into the night, perhaps calling for her daughter to rejoin her, perhaps lamenting a lack of further victims to sate her never ending hunger for revenge, or maybe simply to just air her sorrow. Eventually, tales of the house and its _onryō_ traveled to the far districts of Mutsu Province, and the spirit of Tei, daughter of the headman of Watari, became known as Yashahime. The lady who devours all those who enter her territory, the demon of Yamamoto.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1In the traditional _shakkanhō_ measurement system, 1 _ken_ was approximately equal to 5.4 meters. [return]
> 
> 2 _Ayakashi_ are _yōkai_ that appear at the boundary between the ocean and the air. [return]
> 
> 3The _ryō_ was a unit of gold currency under the traditional _shakkanhō_ measurement system. [return]

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thanks goes out to mod of [themonsterblogofmonsters](http://themonsterblogofmonsters.tumblr.com/), from whom I am borrowing several headcanons and who continues to be an immense help with the plotting, brainstorming, and motivation for writing this fic.


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